Gartner: chip market to grow 5.1% in 2011

Gartner forecasts worldwide application-specific standard product (ASSP) revenue to reach $79.7 billion in 2011 and grow to $99.4 billion by the end of 2015.

With Apple's application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) investment and a commanding grip on popular mobile devices, the ASIC market will experience solid growth through 2015.

The highest overall growth through 2015 is coming from nonoptical sensors, which are primarily driven by automotive applications, but high growth is coming from the increased use of sensors in consumer electronics, especially smartphones, tablets and video game hardware.

"One critical trend is the introduction of new generations of high-performance mobile application processors, which form the heart of both smartphones and media tablets," said Jon Erensen, research director at Gartner. "These high-end processors, combined with higher amounts of DRAM and NAND flash memory, will enable the performance and storage required for advanced new applications, including context-aware computing, augmented reality and computational photography."

"The similarity in architecture between smartphones and media tablets enables handset and tablet OEMs to centralize design around the application processor, which hosts the operating system of choice, and allows the vendor to leverage that design across multiple product categories," Erensen said.

Hi Peter - not only is today the "beginning" of summer but it is also Semi sales forecast day!
In addition to Gartner updating its forecast expectation for 2011 as you reported here, three other market watchers have likewise weighed in today with their latest forecast thinking.
Included are iSuppli (7.2%, up from 7.0%), SIA (endorsed WSTS's forecast of 5.4%) and my latest monthly forecast update of 7.9% based upon the Cowan LRA model run assuming a May 'actual' sales forecast estimate of $24.565 billion.
Mike C.